by Tim Scott
The clock showed nine-forty. At this time of the morning, I should by rights be at work, but I suddenly realized I had almost completely forgotten about work. No matter how much I liked my job, and I really did, the whole idea of it seemed like a strangely distant memory. Like something that no longer even applied to me, as if my whole past life had mysteriously gone out of whack while I was looking the other way. Or worse, had never really existed properly in the first place. What the fuck was happening to me? I’d never felt like this before.
I held that thought and wondered about my house. Maybe I was just getting old and couldn’t cope with unexpected things going off like that. In the past I went in search of the unexpected, daring it to happen in a crazy, youthful way. But now things were different and I had gone soft, or maybe had just got older, and that edge I’d felt so keenly when I was younger was blunted now by too much of the crap of life.
I took a sip and felt the liquid course through me. I was thirty-two and I was a dream architect, designing dreams for anyone who would pay—mainly the incredibly well-off, obviously, because it still wasn’t a cheap habit by any means. I designed the images, constructed the story, then fed it all into a computer program that converted my designs into a small candy-covered tablet with the client’s name neatly embossed on the top. They took the dream an hour before going to bed, and synthetic brain cells in the tablet traveled into the brain via the bloodstream and shed their load of images and dialogue. I’d written a lot of dreams for a lot of people, and I’d only fucked up really badly once.
And now I’d lost my whole dream library. Hundreds of dreams I’d written over the years were filed away in my house, and I deliberately didn’t keep a backup at work because security was so lax. Many of my clients would have been distinctly embarrassed to have their dreams splashed over the magazines, so I had a secure place for them at my home. Now it would be excruciatingly tricky to pick up the serial dreams of many of my clients without my library.
“Fuckers,” I whispered, and retrieved the business card from my inside pocket. “Don’t you hate it when this happens?” I read again. And then looked at the tiny print in the bottom right-hand corner.
“This just can’t be a phone number,” I said almost inaudibly to myself. “Phone, try this number will you? One, eight hundred, ‘a,’ ‘a,’ ‘r,’ ‘r,’ ‘g,’ ‘h,’ ‘h.’ “
“OK,” said the phone. “It’s ringing.”
Someone picked up. “Eddy-yo!” called a voice.
“Who’s this?” I said.
“Who’s that?” came the reply.
“Are you the punk that stole my house?” I said, and felt my pulse increasing.
“Oh man, is that you? Hey!” he called to someone farther off. “It’s the Moose we stole this house off!” Then he added, “Neat place. I mean neat. Know what I’m saying? I love the bathroom fitting—”
“Listen, I want my house back and I want it back now, understand?”
“Whoa. Whoa—man! Listen, you know we can’t do that—this house was an order from an important client, but listen, we can’t find the corkscrew.”
“What?” I said.
“We can’t find the corkscrew.”
“Or the vis-media remote!” called a voice in the background.
“That’s right, or the vis-media remote. Where are they man? Come on!”
“You steal my house and want me to tell you where I keep the media remote?”
“Yeah, Moose. Give us a break here. It’s my friend’s favorite program in ten minutes, and he’ll be in a bad mood if he misses it. What’s that program you watch called, dude?”
“Sarah the Space Chicken,” called the voice in the background.
“Sarah the Space Chicken. Know what I’m saying? Come on—give us a break, here.”
“Listen,” I said, “listen…” I trailed off, hearing the sound of bikes echoing from somewhere. And then the doors of elevators two and three opened, each revealing an identical Rider, dressed in black on a smoking black Crossfield, holding what could only be described as a very large gun.
A second later, the doors opened on elevators one and four and revealed two more identical Riders. The Rider in elevator four was rather smaller—in fact, much smaller—and had clearly just fired several rounds into the elevator control panel. Inconvenient had seen many things, many spurious attempts to get to the bar quickly, and few of them worked. There is no doubt that everyone else in Inconvenient regarded the four Riders as just another group of guys trying to get served in under an hour.
I knew instinctively they were wrong.
I knew instinctively these Riders, for reasons yet unfathomable, were there for me.
3
My plan was quick and I have to admit not entirely foolproof. I dived under the table and, as luck would have it, I did it at the exact moment all four of them roared out of the elevators and began blasting the shit out of everything.
A large proportion of the people waiting at the bar didn’t move. When you’ve waited for that long at Inconvenient, you’re loath to lose your place—even in the face of four very large and surprisingly aggressive Riders, pumping shotgun rounds randomly about the place. I could almost guarantee there were people here now who would be leaning over to the person next to them, and saying, “You know, this is nothing, you should have been here yesterday.”
But frankly, this was something—and from a safe distance I would have found the level of destruction really quite impressive. But close-up, it was genuinely terrifying. I drew my gun, feeling that if I was going to fire it, now would be the perfect time—but I couldn’t see anything through the dust.
“Man, I’m listening, and I’d say you have really upset someone there. You’re having a bad day today, aren’t you?” said the voice on my Skin Media phone in a sudden lull.
“What?” I cried.
“I said, you’re having a bad day. When I have a bad day, I try and sing a song to alleviate the stress. You should try it.”
“Listen,” I shouted, as a vast lump of the ceiling crashed down on the table above me, “I want some things out of my house, OK?” Something inside my head had stirred without my actually being conscious of it, some distant memory, but I couldn’t risk putting it into neat thoughts yet, so I just let my instinct talk and see where it led me. “Now, the vis-media remote is fixed under the table in the lounge, OK? I’ll give you that for nothing, but you’ll never find the really good lights in the bathroom, or work out how to operate the stairs to the roof garden and loads of other stuff, unless I tell you. So I’ll make a deal with you. The books and things I want from the house, for the information you need.”
There was a pause. “Hello?” I shouted above another huge, dust-flaring explosion.
“I’m listening,” said the voice. “And you know what? I’m kind of warming to you, Moose. I think we’ve got a deal.”
“I’ll call you to arrange the handover.” My voice trailed off. One large motorbike wheel had stopped, pointing at the table, then a second one, and a third and a fourth. Hemmed in by the four huge tires, I decided it was pretty hopeless to remain under the table.
Clearly they must have a fix on my C-4 Charlie so, slowly, I peeked out. As I feared, four huge shotguns appeared in the swirl of dust, each an inch from my nose. I instinctively dropped my gun and, before I had even properly stood up, found myself yanked onto the back of one of the bikes.
The bouncers had rallied in the period of calm and, as the bikes screamed about the bar like caged tigers searching for a way out, smoke pluming from the tires, they poured fire in our general direction, wreaking final havoc to any parts of Inconvenient still in one piece. I took a peek over the shoulder of the Rider in front of me and saw rather worryingly that we were headed for the bar—where, incredibly, there were still people waiting to be served. With a screech of power, we cut through the debris, and die-hard customers leapt onto the counter and headed for one of the giant windows. I didn’t like the look of thi
s, so I did what I always do in very bad situations: I closed my eyes.
I’m sure it’s for the best. I’m sure in battle training with the most hardened of special forces troops they have a lecture one day, when their commanding officer says: “And if things get even worse than that, remember, you can always close your eyes.” Well, it worked for me. With my eyes closed I heard the roar and felt the smash as the bike bucked through the gigantic glass window, but I didn’t actually see it.
When I opened them again, things weren’t a great deal better. I found myself plummeting through the freezing sky, surrounded by four large blurs of men in black coats and four spinning Crossfields. I realized I was about to die and felt a confusingly deep regret that I wouldn’t have a chance to see the limpet encyclopedia saleswoman again. There was something about her. Her of all people.
And this would have been almost my last-ever thought if one of the Riders hadn’t bear hugged me with one huge hand and pulled a ripcord with his other. A spurt of shiny black material swept out of his backpack, and with a massive jolt a chute opened and I found myself floating rather peacefully in the iron grip of a Rider, down past the midfloors of the Thin Building.
Who were these guys? Everything was out of kilter; the normal rules of life just didn’t seem to apply anymore and I couldn’t work out why. We sank toward the ground in a small, spiraling group. My head was now jammed to one side of the Rider’s chest, and I could see only a small area below. As I watched, one of the Crossfields came into my view, falling gracefully end over end until it hit an ornamental fountain and exploded theatrically in a burst of metal shards. But we were drifting sideways fast, and my view of the dead bike was soon lost.
The wind was picking up and pulling us south toward Jazz. And, as I guessed, it wasn’t long before I saw the tops of buildings below whipping past at an alarming rate. Either these people were very talented Glider-Riders toying with the elements, ready to pull off an extraordinary maneuver, or they were complete novices totally at the mercy of the screeching wind.
I had a terrible feeling it was the latter.
We skimmed a tall building and I kicked one of the aerials, snapping it clean off, so it snagged on my foot. For a moment I struggled to shake it free until eventually I felt it fall away, then with horror saw we were now dropping down between the buildings and flying along a narrow corridor over the main freeway at terrific speed.
We were definitely in Jazz. Here the buildings were a weird mixture of everything, so that a ground floor would be maybe in a classical style, but the next two floors would be modern and so on. Builders just did a floor each, then let someone else carry on. It was a silly system, and it was things like that which had made Jazz a scapegoat for a lot of the tension between the zones in many cities about twenty years back. I forget which ones it was exactly now—Punk I think, and Brass Band and Underground Shopping Beat and maybe Wah-Wah. They formed a military pact and attacked Jazz, ostensibly on the basis that they didn’t think Jazz was actually music, but it wasn’t really about music. It was about intolerance, stupidity, and insecurity—the things wars were always about. The Jazz Wars lasted for three years until there was a settlement, but the people in Jazz had never quite got over being picked on like that and were ultradefensive to talk to.
We swung wildly, dropping in sudden jolts as we hit windless pockets between the buildings. The freeway below was packed with bikes. Either we were going to get killed by the traffic, or we were going to get killed by hitting one of the buildings. The options weren’t good.
Another terrifying drop, and we skimmed the road. I swung my legs up to my chest to avoid one of the bikes speeding toward us. There were few options left and I braced myself, now frankly annoyed that I was going to die in a head-on collision with about forty bikes and I had absolutely no clue as to why.
Suddenly, we swung left into a small sheltered alley and the turn sucked the lift from the chute and we stalled, pausing agonizingly for what seemed like an entire minute though in reality it was probably about half a second, before plummeting the last five feet to the ground.
We landed unceremoniously in an open Dumpster. After a moment I pulled myself together, cleared the rotting food off my coat, and clambered unscathed but dazed onto the ground.
I was in an alley somewhere in Jazz, and I wasn’t dead. By rights, I should have been grateful, but I wasn’t; I was steaming with annoyance. The Rider disentangled himself from the chute and approached me. Above I heard a dull crunch and looked to see one of the other Riders smacking his helmet forcefully into the brick wall just above us and crashing down the last ten feet.
“Ahhh. My ankle, my ankle,” he cried, bouncing off the side of the Dumpster. “You said these things were easy but I think I’ve broken my fucking ankle, Jeff.” And he rolled about, somewhat theatrically, on the ground.
“Death. My name is Death,” said the other Rider tersely.
“That is the last time I trust you, the last time. I can hardly walk. Oh shit, there’s a hole in my pants and I love these pants! These are my lucky pants!”
“Just shut up about your pants and find War and Famine!”
“Who?”
“The other two. Go on; I’ll look after the Package.” And he turned to me. “Did you have a good flight, sir?”
“No, I fucking didn’t,” I said as my general feeling of relief and annoyance beat back any sense of fear. “Would it be too much to ask what the fuck is going on here?”
“Jonny X, you are having a bad day today, aren’t you? Well it’s going to get better soon because we have a special surprise waiting for you. We are going to look after you with the utmost care.” And with that, he punched me with a curving uppercut, and I was only vaguely aware of the noise of the punch landing on my chin and the sharp twist of my head as I fell deeply unconscious.
In this state, I dreamed vividly. Normally I don’t remember my dreams, and I can trace the moment that it all began to twelve years earlier, when I was training to be a dream architect. As students, we had access to the hardware to make dreams at a fraction of the cost. OK, the quality wasn’t as good—some images would get lost or stories jumbled—but basically we had the chance to have as many dreams as we wanted, every night. And I took full advantage. The safety limit was three a week, but there were a lot of things I didn’t know how to deal with going on in my life back then—like Eli’s brother, Jack, dying—so I used the dreams to escape. Sometimes I was taking ten a night.
Designer dreams are vivid and stay with you well into the day, and for a while it was a great release; a glorious window into another world. But after a while it’s like eating too much candy and your brain becomes restless for something else. Something with more depth, something with some kind of substance and meaning.
We’d all read the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung at college, and we’d immersed ourselves in long, late-night brandy-and coffee-fueled arguments about their beliefs. Were genuine dreams compensatory? Were they a way for our subconscious to give us warning of dangers ahead, if only we could interpret and understand them?
The theories seemed to have weight but what was certain is that designer dreams didn’t do that. They were just window dressing, and maybe worse than that; maybe they fucked up your subconscious in a way no one properly understood.
So, with no head space for my own dreams I began to feel drained, unsettled, and unattached. And when I found myself saying things and doing things I didn’t recognize as me, I knew I had to change my life quickly.
So I just stopped.
I left designer dreams alone completely. Now I don’t even take up the complimentary quota of dreams I’m allowed by Easy-Dreams, the company I work for. Instead I give them all away to friends—mainly to Teb, whose head is so much on another planet already it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Sometimes now, I have moments of unfathomable despair when I find it hard to get a grip on who I am. I can’t adequately explain it, but I put this feeling down to that
time of my life.
So it doesn’t take a genius to work out that I don’t remember my dreams now because something in me doesn’t want to. It’s one of those ironies I liked—a well-paid dream architect happy to give other people dreams, but who hasn’t remembered one of his own for twelve years. But that was all in the past and the dreams I had now in my state of utter unconsciousness were outrageously vivid and comforting, in a way that was unlike any designer dreams I could remember.
It was an unbelievable release, a huge sigh of relief—a wonderful peacefulness that things would turn out right if only I could just keep going. So many images coursed through me that when I woke I felt settled and chilled out and I lay there, happy just to be.
Up above, a ceiling fan covered in dust thwacked the air gently, even though the room was cool. Then, after another minute, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know where the hell this place was. I went to sit up and found I was strapped down to a bed. I turned my head to one side and saw a row of old metal hospital beds, parked up neatly against a wall, and elsewhere random bits of ancient medical equipment standing about hopelessly. I glanced to the other side and there was nothing much, just more beds and a blank wall. I looked back at the ceiling fan and became aware of a dull ache from my jaw.
The pain triggered the memory of all that had happened in the past few hours, and it crashed over me in one gigantic wave of cold reality. Even while I was half-wondering if I really believed it all to be true, I knew deep down that it all was.
What on earth was it they wanted from me? From me, for God’s sake? I was just a normal guy; I got up, went to work, came home, and on a good night had a beer with my friends. So why me? There had to be some reason. I turned the thought over in my mind. Some craziness of my ex-wife, Sarah? No, even she wasn’t that mad. Emma, my girlfriend? We’d had one argument; surely this would have to classify as overkill even by her standards. My house…What did that guy say about my house? Something had stuck in my mind. It had been stolen to order, yeah, but there was nothing unusual about that. It must have made it on to one of the books of an estate agent on the Dark Side somehow. And then the limpet encyclopedia saleswoman; she said she got information that I was emotionally vulnerable from my Medi-Data stream, but that information was supposed to be guarded from the Dark Side by a zillion systems.
